"Pliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and of medium thickness. The leaves are bound in a modern pliable vellum binding with three blank vellum fly-leaves in front and seven in back, all modern. On the inside of the front cover is the book-plate of John Pierpont Morgan, showing the Morgan arms with the device: Onward ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... was dismayed to see Dick walking arm in arm across the Quadrangle with Coote, laughing at some narration which that pliable young ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... directions given. I therefore accepted of the offer of a friend of his to sit up with us that night, whom I begged to pay particular attention to the directions, and to watch the proper times the medicines were to be given. This he did with great care, and my dear doctor was very pliable in taking them as they were offered. As for me I was so deeply engaged with the concerns of his soul, I was unfit for ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... without which friendship is an empty name. For the essence of friendship being that two minds become as one, how can that ever take place if the mind of each of the separate parties to it is not single and uniform, but variable, changeable, and complex? Can anything be so pliable, so wavering, as the mind of a man whose attitude depends not only on another's feeling and wish, but on his very looks ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... will last much longer and be made tough and pliable, by dipping for a minute or two, in a pail of boiling suds, once a week. A carpet will wear longer if swept with a broom treated in this way. Leave your broom bottom side up, ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... fact remains that our recruits, in the short time available for their education, can only be well and quickly taught on well-trained pliable horses. That such horses, with sufficient exercise, go better and more safely across country than those brought forward by more hasty methods, is sufficiently proved by the fact that all our steeplechase riders in the Army take the greatest pains to prepare their horses thoroughly ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... milk, and give the whole one boil up. Or, take stale bread crumbs, pour over them boiling water and boil till soft, stirring well; take from the fire and gradually stir in a little glycerine or sweet oil, so as to render the poultice pliable when applied. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... the same inflexibility with which he held his political views. Once he had settled upon a conviction or an opinion, nothing could move him. He was singularly stubborn, and yet, in all the minor matters of life, in all his merely personal concerns, in everything except his basal ideas, he was pliable to a degree. He could be talked into almost any concession of interest. He once told Herndon he thanked God that he had not been born a woman because he found it so hard to refuse any request made of him. His ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... easily accessible regions where the wilder Negritos live the breechcloth and saya are made of the inner bark of certain trees which is flayed until it becomes soft and pliable. ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... between laughter and vexation. "I don't care if you do hate dinner parties. I must have them sometimes. I love to see people enjoying themselves as they all did tonight, except that odious Mrs Norton, who doesn't count. You're not pliable enough. That's what's the matter with you. But if I live to a hundred and twenty you'd never make a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... was purely wicked. In all the range of sentient creatures there is none so innately and barbarously cruel as the human boy-child; and this was the first time Thomas Jefferson had ever had a helplessly pliable subject. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the secret predestination of God, because we are not considering what might or might not happen, but what the nature of man truly was. Adam, therefore, might have stood if he chose, since it was only by his own will that he fell; but it was because his will was pliable in either direction, and he had not received constancy to persevere, that he so easily fell. Still he had a free choice of good and evil; and not only so, but in the mind and will there was the highest rectitude, and all the organic parts were duly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... conscience; for wanting the authority of God to back their assertions and prescriptions, they must make up that with an addition of preternatural force and strength. Hence, such as are purely led by conscience, are pliable, humble, and ready to hear and receive information; whereas, others are headstrong and pertinacious, unwilling to receive instruction, or to hear any thing contrary to their minds, lest their conscience, receiving more light, speak with a higher voice against their inclinations ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... the body is boiled down for oil, which is invaluable for boots of any kind, making them waterproof and pliable. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Christian setting forth on his journey, and here are Obstinate and Pliable, two of his neighbors, following him to urge him to ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... than once regretted that Madame Chevalier was not ordered to enter into the conspiracy against Paul (whose inconsistency and violence they foresaw would make his reign short), that she might have influenced the conspirators to fix upon a successor more pliable and less scrupulous, and who would have suffered the Cabinet of St. Cloud to dictate to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... impression that baskets of the ordinary rigid character have been extensively used by our ancient peoples in the manufacture of pottery to build the vessel in or upon; but my investigations tend to show that such is not the case, and that nets or sacks of pliable materials have been almost exclusively employed. These have been applied to the surface of the vessel, sometimes covering the exterior entirely, and at others only the body or a part of the body. ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... it was alive. My anatomical employments enabled me to remove all their doubts about the fact. I offered to make the experiment before them, if they pleased; the child should be laid in warm water, till its flesh should become soft and pliable, as in a body just dead; then it should be compressed, and remain so till cold, and then they would see the same effect produced. They were ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter
... that they could get rid of him by talking him to death; but it didn't work. He shut 'em up in the very barrack where they did their talking, and those who didn't jump out of the windows he enrolled in his suite, where they soon became mute as fish and pliable as a tobacco-pouch. This coup made him consul; and as he wasn't one to doubt the Supreme Being who had kept good faith with him, he hastened to fulfil his own promise by restoring the churches and reestablishing religion; whereupon ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... the Rose, but men real enough to stop you on the road and to hold your attention. Scene after scene follows, in which are pictured many of our own spiritual experiences. There is the Slough of Despond, into which we all have fallen, out of which Pliable scrambles on the hither side and goes back grumbling, but through which Christian struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out on solid ground and bids him go on his way. Then come Interpreter's house, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... great congregations, who are the saved? No man can tell. Many are moved by sympathy for their friends. Others are charmed by the congregational singing and the music of the organ. Many see that the revival is bound to go, and, like Pliable, they are swept along for a time with it. But there appears in this mixed company a man with the stamp of divine authority upon his brow, the gold braid of full salvation on his helmet, the dialect of Canaan on his tongue and the air of official appointment about his person: "Without holiness ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the ancient man was put in a large vat. Fluids submerged it, slowly soaking from that hardened flesh the alkali that had preserved it for so long. The fluid was changed often, until woody muscles and other tissues became pliable once more. ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... them. Thou knowest not what she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me! Unchanged must ever be the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and of contributing to their happiness; perhaps no person in existence has seen more of the world and life in its various phases than himself. His manners are naturally to the highest degree courtly, yet he nevertheless possesses a disposition so pliable that he finds no difficulty in accommodating himself to all kinds of company, in consequence of which he is a universal favourite. There is a mystery about him, which, wherever he goes, serves not a ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... medicine is good or bad according to his success. If he finds a feather at wrong angle in his path, his medicine is bad for that day. The Indian fasts and dances and chants, using his mind, his spirit, and his body as pliable instruments in the making of his prayer. He finds in the veritable exhaustion of his body the spirit path made clear for his dreams, until the very stars seem as the eyes of the gods, and the sighing of the pines comes to him as ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... even speak to such a perfectly pliable person as Lady Lundie? You may have been a very useful fellow at sea. A more helpless young man I never met with on shore. Get out with you into the garden among the other sparrows! Somebody must confront her ladyship. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of habitual dissimulation, and his vices displayed themselves, at ease, as his limbs in a bath. He felt himself so powerless against her, that he never essayed to struggle. She possessed him. Once or twice he attempted to firmly oppose her ruinous caprices; but she had made him pliable as the osier. Under the dark glances of this girl, his strongest resolutions melted more quickly than snow beneath an April sun. She tortured him; but she had also the power to make him forget all by a smile, a tear, or a kiss. Away from the enchantress, reason returned at intervals, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... I got Raggerton alone in the smoking-room, and had a little talk with him. He had just dropped a hundred pounds on a double event that hadn't come off, and I expected to find him pliable. Nor was I disappointed, for, when we had negotiated a little loan, he was entirely at my service, and willing to tell me everything, on my promising not to give ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... recognize. Like the micas, the chlorites (or "hydromicas") are monoclinic in crystallization and have a perfect cleavage parallel to the flat face of the scales and plates. The cleavage is, however, not quite so prominent as in the micas, and the cleavage flakes though pliable are not elastic. The chlorites usually occur as salt (H2-3) scaly aggregates of a dark-green colour. They vary in specific gravity between 2.6 and 3.0, according to the amount of iron present. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... under certain conditions. Human beings, I find, have their solid, liquid and gaseous states. Be not surprised, therefore, if Tescheron, frigid when surrounded by his cracked ice and cold-storage products at the fish market, becomes pliable or volatile material in Hoboken under the heat of fear and temper, and, before cooling, is wrought into strange shapes by the artisan, Smith. Poor Tescheron! Innocently I made him pay a pretty penny! But ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... harbouring them, but their presence is like to interfere with my projects in my own family. My simple cousin of Orleans hath barely seen this damsel, and I venture to prophesy that the sight of her is like to make him less pliable in the matter of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... her brows in thought, her blue eyes dark with conjecture. "I don't know," she said at length. "Sometimes I think I do, and sometimes I think I don't. He's very good-looking in a tall, blond, pliable way, and he can be very amusing when he wants to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Indian similitude affected by the two surmounting tips of eagle feathers. He was arrayed in much splendor, according to aboriginal standards; the fringed seams of his hunting shirt and leggings, fashioned of fine white dressed doeskin, as pliable as "Canton silk crape," were hung with fawns' trotters; his moccasins were white and streaked with parti-colored paint; he had a curious prickly belt of wolves' teeth, which intimated his moral courage as well as sylvan prowess, for the slaying of these beasts was esteemed unlucky, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... some favor. From these, therefore, I shall expect, and shall not be disappointed, considerable candor and allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... "Now it's coming! I thought it would. No, Miss Moore, I am not easy to get on with. I've had a rotten life all through, and it hasn't made me very pliable." He paused, looking at her under his black brows as if debating with himself as to how far he would take her into his confidence. "I've been cheated of the best from the very outset," he said, "cheated and thwarted at every ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... that Pliable began to be offended, and angerly said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill luck at our first setting out, what may we expect 'twixt this and our Journey's ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... endowed her. But the girl was not really bad. She was essentially nervous and craved excitement, so she had drifted into this sort of life because no counteracting influence of good had been injected into her pliable disposition. None, that is, until the friendly editor for whom she worked, anticipating her final downfall, had sought to save her by sending her to a country newspaper. He talked to the girl artist very frankly before she left for Millville, and Hetty knew he was right, and was truly ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... you need to kill yourselves at it," grinned Jack, and went to examine the riata. Those two trips had accomplished much towards making it a pliable, live thing in the hands of one skilled to direct its snaky dartings here and there, wherever one willed it to go. Many trips it would require before the riata ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... measured English of an old and lovable book, just as you grew used to read in his face what he was to say, before the words had begun to flow. Never was there a face more quick to reflect the mind, more pliable to humour, more luminous at some stirring idea or deed, more indignant at the bare notion of a wrong inflicted, softer at the call ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her. She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly fresh and untainted being, naively unconscious even, of the elements, either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting only for the hand of a wise ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... quart of whole-wheat flour mix a large cup of must be very stiff, and rendered soft and pliable by thorough kneading and afterward pounding with a mallet for at least half an hour in the following manner: Pound the dough oat flat, and until of the same thickness throughout; dredge lightly with flour; double the dough over evenly and pound quickly around the outside, to fasten the edges ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... there is nothing that cannot be done with the human body. Sometimes it almost appears as if it were boneless, so well are people able by practice to make use of their limbs to accomplish feats which astonish ordinary persons whose limbs are less pliable. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... remembered very well; yet there was a difference; not grief had changed them, but life had. The brow had all its fine chiselling and high purity of expression; but now there sat there a hopelessness, or rather a want of hopefulness, that a child's face never knows. The mouth was sweet and pliable as ever, but now often patience and endurance did not quit their seat upon the lip even when it smiled. The eye with all its old clearness and truthfulness had a shade upon it that nine years ago ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... natural—that she had half a dozen fluttered young girls on her mind, whom she was providing with programmes, seats, ices, occasional murmured remarks and general support and protection. When the concert was over she supplied them with further entertainment in the form of several young men who had pliable backs and flashing breastpins and whom she inarticulately introduced to them, which gave her still more to do, as after this serious step she had to stay and watch all parties. It was strange to Raymond to see her transformed by her mother into a precocious ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... abandon him the moment she gets him to sign a power of attorney, by which they mean to obtain the income of his money in the Funds. That letter will bring her back under his roof, the handsome runaway! this very night, or I'm mistaken. I promise to make her as pliable as a bit of whalebone for the rest of her days, if my uncle allows me to take Maxence Gilet's place; which, in my opinion, he ought never to have had in the first place. Am I not right?—and yet here's my uncle ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... light hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia's plight grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and was made dumb by ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... had passed, or were passing, away, Francis II stood somewhat low among the mediocrities on whom fell the strokes of destiny. He was a poor replica of Leopold II. Where the father was supple and adroit, the son was perversely obstinate or weakly pliable. In place of foresight and tenacity in the pursuit of essentials, Francis was remarkable for a more than Hapsburg narrowness of view, and he lacked the toughness which had not seldom repaired the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... water more than any other craft, except the largest. A trip from Kadiak to Seattle in a baidarka is in fact on record. With a light framework of wood, covered, bottom and deck, excepting the hatches, with the skin of the hair seal, it is lighter than any other canoe, pliable, but very staunch, and works its way over the waves more like a snake than a boat. The lines are such that friction is done away with, and driven through the water by good men, it is the most graceful craft afloat. It has a curious split prow, so made for ease in ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... upon whom none can rightly reckon. At one moment he will be adamant, at another yielding and pliable. One day his soul will be on fire, and nothing would move him; but in another mood he would listen and weigh every argument, and might be easily persuaded. One thing is very sure: gentleness would prevail with him a thousand times ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... such a delusion. He begged of his new-found friend to withdraw the statement, or at least to abate it. The other man was sorry, but he simply could not do it. He stood ready to concede almost anything else, but on this particular point he was adamant; in fact, adamant was in comparison with him as pliable as chewing taffy. Much as he regretted it, he could not modify his assertion by so much as one brief jot or one small tittle without violating the consistent principles of a consistent life. He felt that way about it. All his family ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... other, and settling nowhere." Robert Southey, whose prose style was the perfection of neatness, and who was intimate with Coleridge throughout his life, laments that it is "extraordinary that he should write in so rambling and inconclusive a manner;" his mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable and subtle, "turning and winding, till you get weary of ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... simultaneously exclaim, "A piece of leather." This being answered, he will proceed to the qualities, and will have either from his class, or by his own help, the following answers: "It is dry, it is smooth, it is hard, it is tough, it is pliable, it is opaque," &c. He will then question them as to its uses, and will ask, "What is made from leather?" A. Boots and shoes. Q. What use is it of else? A. Books are bound with it; and so on through all its uses. He will then ask them how ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... the very essence of fragility, as they break from the parent tree at a touch; and yet one of the willows furnishes the tough, pliable and enduring withes from which are woven the baskets of the world. The willows, usually thin in branch, sparse of somewhat pale foliage, of so-called mournful mien, are yet bursting with vigor and life; indeed, the spread and the value of the family is by reason of this tenacity and virility, ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... plans for the juniors and seniors, but these august persons declined to become enthusiastic over the movement and balked so vigorously at the first intimation of interference with their affairs that Miss Davis retired gracefully from their horizon and devoted her energy to the younger and more pliable pupils ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... flutings, which seem to be the impressions of a hollow bone or reed. The whole exterior surface is embellished with a most elaborate ornamental design, which resembles the imprint of some woven fabric. If a woven fabric has not been used, a pliable stamp, producing the effect of a fabric, has been resorted to. The fact that the sharply concave portions of the neck are marked with as much regularity as the convex body of the vessel, precludes the idea of the use of a solid ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... bathed in love's elixir conscience becomes very pliable indeed, and as the promptings of Timmins's inner self were all toward Janet, his outer man was not long in making up his mind. But though, following the cap'en's advice, he joined himself to the elect of Zorra, his change of faith brought him only a ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... and the demand at the little station had long exceeded the supply, but the operator was able to furnish the length of bale rope Tisdale asked of him. From the office door, where he had curiously followed to see the line put to use, he watched the traveler secure two pliable branches of hemlock, of the same size, which he brought to the station platform, and, having stripped them of needles, bent into ovals. Then, laying aside one, he commenced to weave half of the rope net-wise, filling the space in the frame he held. A sudden intelligence leaped in the agent's face. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... When his wife's temper was aroused she was liable to be rash and unreasonable. He thought if they could but get rid of Wallace they could perhaps coax Violet into a more pliable frame of mind. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... all the value he had, in his wildest moments, claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans, and annually ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... altogether on subjects theological, doth not lay down strong and close demonstrations; he doth not make himself ready for the contest (as he is wont) like a wrestler, that he may take the firmer hold of his adversary and be sure of giving him the trip; but draws men on by more soft and pliable attacks, by pleasant fictions ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... manufactured were not fine in form or finish, but they were durable, and answered the purposes of a rude method of agriculture. Horse collars were made from corn husks and from poplar bark which was stripped from the tree, in the spring, when the sap was up and it was soft and pliable, and separated into narrow strips which were plaited together. These collars were easy for the horse, and served the purpose of the more costly leather collar. Every season at least 200 cotton baskets were made. One man usually worked at this all the year round, but in the spring he had ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... promise a satisfactory administration. Though the Federalist intriguers would have been glad of more explicit assurances they counted on his vengeful temper and hatred of the Virginia domination at Washington to make him a pliable tool. They were willing to commit the party openly to Burr and trust to events to bind ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... everybody on this coast. The best made cost 340 dollars, or about sixty guineas, and fifty pounds is not at all an uncommon price to pay, though the inferior kind may be had for two pounds. Those ordinarily worn by the gentlemen here cost from twenty to thirty pounds each, but they are so light, pliable, and elastic that they will wear for ever, wash like a pocket-handkerchief, do not get burnt by the sun, and can be rolled up and sat upon—in fact, ill-treated in any way you like—without fear of their breaking, tearing, or ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Stanhope had tried, without success, to find a substitute for inking-balls by making rollers covered with different kinds of skins. He also tried other materials, such as cloth, silk, etc., but the unavoidable seam and the impossibility of keeping these materials soft and pliable defeated his purpose. About 1813 inking-rollers made of a composition of glue and molasses came into general use, and this important invention was of great assistance in the further improvement of ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... from heathen and pagan lands. How 'the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.' Baptism is not an austere law. There is nothing austere or rigid, in any sense, connected with it; but it makes me think of the water itself, scattered in so many beautiful and pliable forms all over the earth, in fountains, water-falls, dew, rain-drops; and, when it cannot 'stand before His cold,' it comes down softly upon us, in crystal asteroids and all the geometrical forms of snow. I love to think that God ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... pieces, made friends with the actors, taught them, and wrote parts to suit their qualities. At Pisa he attended as a stranger the meeting of the Arcadian Academy, and at its close attracted all attention to himself by his clever improvisation. He was in truth a ready-witted man, pliable, full of resource, bred half a valet, half a Roman graeculus. Alfieri saw more of Europe than Goldoni. France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, Spain, all parts of Italy he visited with restless haste. From land ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... name of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr..., or by mistaking Lithopaedus for Trinecavellius,—from the too great similitude of the names.) published by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,—that by force of the woman's efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds avoirdupois ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Derbies, and Alpines or soft-felt hats should never be brushed with a whisk broom. A hatter will sell you for a small sum a soft brush with a pliable plush back, which will do for smoothing your silk hat, the bristles to be applied in removing the dust. A silk handkerchief will also smooth a silk hat. Frequent ironing destroys the nap. Straw hats can be cleaned by first rubbing them over with the half of a lemon, then taking an old ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... incites to treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with, one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside Mr. Stubborn on ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... and paid him full carpenter's wages. He was not satisfied then, he watched the man at his work to see that the least little detail was done correctly, till the fellow would have left the job, had he not been made pliable by the Goliath ale. So he just stretched the job out as long as he could, and talked and talked with Iden, and stroked him the right way, and drank the ale, and "played it upon me and on William, That day in a way I despise." Till what ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... out of thin plates of gold and attached them in place by means of stitches through tiny holes bored in the metal. Gold is the most common metal in the Land of Oz and is used for many purposes because it is soft and pliable. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the best what is it? why care about it, think about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and entanglements to extricate? Let me have them; but let me not hear of them ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... ears on gusts of wind, and died away as the wind ebbed. She dropped the dish-cloth three times in five minutes, and washed her cup and saucer twice. She struggled bravely in the Slough of Despond for awhile, and then turned back with Pliable. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... on the lower edge of the hill, to meet the coach, that went upon a road higher on the hill. Our walk was not long, nor unpleasant: the longer I walk, the less I feel its inconvenience. As I grow warm, my breath mends, and I think my limbs grow pliable. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the air is en evidence. She is a demoniac being, knowing her own power, and full of devilish instinct. The marble is full of life, and one seems to feel the warmth of her delicate, powerfully chiselled, though soft and pliable limbs." ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... innocence that attracted her? Or was she merely trying to keep up her spirits a little—trying to be younger than she was? But then one day she came up to the reservoir where Grindhusen and I were at work, and sat watching us for a while. It was easy work then for half an hour; the granite turned pliable, and yielded to our will; we built away like giants. Oh, but Fruen sat there irresponsible as ever, letting her eyes play this way and that. Why could she not rid herself of this new habit of hers? Her eyes were ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... cards for carding wool, and as he invented an improvement in the process of their production, he is said to have made a very good business of it for some time. A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money. When ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... The figure was drawn up at its full height. It had in truth a noble dignity of outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... they were, ranged themselves in a line, after having drawn lots for their places. Whilst they waited the signal to start, they practised, by way of prelude, various motions to awaken their activity, and to keep their limbs pliable and in a right temper.(134) They kept themselves in wind by small leaps, and making little excursions, that were a kind of trial of their speed and agility. Upon the signal being given they flew towards the goal, with a rapidity ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... odoriferous herbs, and undergoing the pleasant sensation of being dabbed all the while with pads of flannels through holes in the wet blankets that surround you, until the cartilaginous substances of your joints are made as pliable as the ligaments of boiled calves' feet, your whole system relaxed and unnerved, and your trembling legs as useless in supporting your body as a pair of boots would be without the usual quantity of flesh and bone within them. The Steyne ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... black pansies, and his jet-black, stubborn hair, that grew like a thick, velvet cap above his smooth forehead, were all his own. His hands, likewise, were such as had never been seen upon a Blashkov. They were white and hard, but pliable as rubber, their fingers extraordinarily long. In fact, they were hands for which any musician, teacher or virtuoso, would, had such commodities been marketable, have bought at any price. And this fact had early been recognized ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... can only be inferred from the ducal accounts, which are eloquent with information about the creators of all this mimic pomp. About six sous a day was the wage earned by a painter, while the plumbers received eight. These latter were called upon to coax pliable lead into all sorts of shapes, often more grotesque ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... in his strength and stature. She, with her softer as well as finer nature, more pliable and more malleable, rejoiced in her very weakness and, his subjection once secured, instantly bowed to his ascendancy; now she had brought him under her slavery, she acknowledged him for the master, the hero, the god, burned to obey, to admire, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... worse than the individuals composing them, because the official takes place of the moral sense. The nerves that in themselves were soft and pliable enough, and responded naturally to the touch of pity, when fastened into a machine of that sort become callous and rigid, and throw off every extraneous application that can be made to them with perfect apathy. An appeal is made to the ties of individual ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive,—a will despotic in its dictates—an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character—the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this world, ever rose, or ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... at the Midas on the previous night he had replaced his leather boots with "mukluks," which are waterproof, light, and pliable footgear made from the skin of seal and walrus. He was thus able to move as noiselessly as though in moccasins. Finding neither pencil nor paper in his pocket, he tried the outer door of the office, to find it unlocked. He stepped inside and listened, then moved towards a table on which ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and business always is uppermost with you. I sometimes wonder if you think a woman has a soul. As for my marriage—you saw that Tom could be useful to you. He had the various distinctive points you have mentioned. Better than that he was pliable, capable of being molded to perform your work, to manipulate machine politics and procure for you the legislation you desired. You did not consider what kind of a husband he would make for your daughter whom you did not know. ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... impulse to see existence in imposed sentimental or formally moral conceptions. From all this he returned with a feeling of delight to his personal longing for Susan Brundon; he saw her bowed over the table in an exhaustion almost an attitude of surrender. A slender, pliable figure in soft merino and lace. He saw her beyond the candles of Graham Jannan's supper table, a rose geranium at her breast. The motto of the bon bon ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to smile. They look more or less benevolent, more or less pleased, more or less love-smitten; but they are not pliable or subtle enough to smile. A woman who is not sufficiently prudent to mask her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who revealed their whole natures in ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... other time; of which the females have only, three or four at a birth. They feed on the leaves and fruit of trees, pulling down the large boughs with their trunks, and bringing them to their mouths. This trunk is composed of a very thick cartilage, and is pliable in every direction. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... as possible. The use of high-top boots is to be deprecated, as they are tiresome and unwieldy. Short boots, with thick, iron-pegged soles, are generally preferred by trappers, and in order to render them soft, pliable, and waterproof they may be soaked or smeared with a hot mixture, composed of one part rosin, two parts beeswax, and three parts tallow. Simple tallow, or even the fat of the deer, is sometimes used ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... promised me much, less than my due, being disappointed of his presumptuous desires, has tried to deprive me of all my friends; and as he has found them wise and not pliable to his will, he has menaced me that, having found means of denouncing me, he would deprive me of my benefactors. Hence I have informed your Lordship of this, to the end [that this man who wishes to sow the usual scandals, may find no soil fit for sowing the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... hide wincing; but he had said to himself that these associations ought to have been worn threadbare by familiarity, or to have been approached gradually, and he could not conquer his awkwardness or crush his susceptibility. But youth is pliable and versatile, and Harry Jardine was determined to evince no dislike, and make no marked distinction. Very soon the Miss Crawfurds and their cousin blended with the other young ladies in his view,—nay, he discovered that he had come across a cousin of theirs settled abroad, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... "that, since I have lived at 'Pastimes,' I have not had my own way at all. I have not wanted it. Mrs Fane's character is stronger than mine. I have been content to abdicate in her favour. If you asked her opinion of me, she would probably tell you that I was too pliable—too easily influenced." ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the younger man had been inclined to rebel; but for once in his life he found that he had passed the limit of license, and his father, whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable, was unexpectedly his master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he was a boy. He told him of his own earlier privations, of ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... the best results. Trees can be utilized for posts when very small. When green the wood rots very quickly in contact with the soil. Poles for posts should be cut in summer and peeled and dried before setting. The wood becomes very tough and pliable when steamed, and is of value for sleigh runners and for ribs of canoes and skiffs. Together with white elm (Ulmus Americana) it is extensively used for barrel staves in slack cooperage and also for furniture. The thick, viscous inner bark, which gives the tree its descriptive name, ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... indeed all the details of beauty, are much cared for. The toes of the feet are exercised in a variety of ways, and are almost as elastic and pliable as the fingers, being, as well as the ankles ornamented with jewels. Soles, secured with sandals protect the under part of the foot. On many great occasions the sandals are dispensed with, the sole being secured by a preparation ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... the musical builders of the past they have been carefully considered, mathematically calculated, and have finally resolved themselves into a recognized scale, composed of tones and half tones. These are the composer's plastic resources. He shapes them precisely as the sculptor fashions the pliable clay with which he strives to bring his ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... "middleboro" and "great." Rods of two to three years' growth, known as "sticks," are used to form the rigid framework of the bottoms and lids of square work. In every case, except the last, the stuff is soaked in tanks to render it pliable before use—brown from three to seven days, white and buff from half-an-hour to half a day. The rods are used whole for ordinary work, but for baskets of slight and finer texture each is divided into "skains" of different degrees ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... young man a nervous but pleasant "Good-morrow," and observed with satisfaction that he wore no body armour. His original intention had been to attempt to suborn him, and render him pliable by bribery; but now that the moment for action was arrived he dared not make the offer. He lacked for words in which to present his proposal, and he was afraid lest the man should resent it, and in a fit of indignation attack him with his partisan. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... breast. The pressed ivory becomes soft, and losing its hardness, yields to the fingers, and gives way, just as Hymettian wax[41] grows soft in the sun, and being worked with the fingers is turned into many shapes, and becomes pliable by the very handling. While he is amazed, and is rejoicing, {though} with apprehension, and is fearing that he is deceived; the lover again and again touches the object of his desires with his hand. It is a {real} body; the veins throb, when touched ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... lore, the practical scientist sees in the anemone, trembling and bending before the wind, a perfect adaptation to its environment. Anchored in the light soil by a horizontal rootstock; furnished with a stem so slender and pliable no blast can break it; its pretty leaves whorled where they form a background to set off the fragile beauty of the solitary flower above them; a corolla economically dispensed with, since the white sepals are made to do the advertising for insects; the slightly nodding attitude of the blossom ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. I flatter myself that I have some influence over her. She is pliable, and I can be strong in my recommendations ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself, that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this solitude to languish under an ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... plastro; (of Paris) gipso. plate : telero; (photo) klisxajxo. platform : estrado; platajxo; perono, trotuaro. play : ludi; teatrajxo. "-ful", petola. please : placxi al, kontentigi. pleasant : afabla, agrabla. pledge : garantiajxo. pliable : fleksebla. plot : konspir'i, -o; intrig'i, -o. plough : plug'i, -ilo. plum : pruno. plumber : plumbisto. plural : multenombro. plush : plusxo. pocket : posxo, enposxigi. pod : sxelo. poem : poemo. poet : poeto. poetry : poezio, versajxo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... snow during very cold weather in winter, moccasins are preferable to boots or shoes, as being more pliable, and allowing a freer circulation of the blood. In crossing the Rocky Mountains in the winter, the weather being intensely cold, I wore two pairs of woolen socks, and a square piece of thick blanket sufficient to cover the feet and ankles, over which were drawn ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... the housing of his proportionately small brain, but concentrates on giving him a big stomach fitted with "all modern conveniences." On the other hand, the head of the Cerebral is large because his brain is large. The skull which is pliable and unfinished at birth grows to conform to the size and shape of the brain as the glove takes on the shape of the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... how pliable we all are at twenty-three—how often our opinions waver and our emotions change. I was particularly mercurial in my temperament before the events I am relating hardened me. I often laid in a half-waking state almost all night, my imagination full of horrible images; and when ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... simple and aspiring; and certainly most perfect among evergreens, with their straight, faintly carmined shoots, their pliable strong leaves so subtly rippled at the edge, and their clean, dry fragrance; delicate, austere, alert, serene; such are ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... our heads and hands. For, when we came to plank the bottom, we had very vexatious difficulties to encounter, as our only plank consisted in pieces from the deck of our wreck, which was so dry and stubborn that fire and water had hardly any effect in making it pliable, as it rent, split, and flew in pieces like glass; so that I now began to fear that all our labour was in vain, and we must quietly wait to be taken off by some Spanish ship, and be led quietly to prison ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... connexion,—of extinguishing all principle. A few men have got an ascendency, where no man should have a personal ascendency; by the executive powers of state being at their command, they have been furnished with the means of creating divisions. This has brought pliable men, not capable men, into the highest situations; and to such men is the government of this once-glorious empire now entrusted. The spirit of delusion has gone forth; the ministers have imposed on the people; parliament has been induced to sanctify the imposition; false lights have ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... could succeed in making them take any other when in a situation of constraint. The skin of the cameleon is of a very soft and delicate texture, and appears to the observer similar to a shagreen skin, elastic and pliable; and it may be owing to this extraordinary construction that it changes its colours and size with that facility which astonishes us; but what may be considered as a more wonderful faculty is, its expanding and contracting itself at pleasure, and, as it were, retaining ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of words, through similarities in sounds deceiving the ear, or through a confusion of the literal with the metaphorical signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ones, as the Chinese and Semitic types, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... esteem among the Indians. It is thinner than that of the moose, but makes a much better article of leather. When dressed in the Indian fashion—that is to say, soaked in a lather composed of the brains and fat of the animal itself, and then washed, dried, scraped, and smoked—it becomes as soft and pliable as a kid-glove, and will wash and dry without stiffening like chamois leather. That is a great advantage which it has, in the eyes of the Indians, over the skins of other species of deer, as the moose and caribou—for the leather made ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and pliable struck his face with stinging force, and he felt the warm blood trickle down his cheeks. Instantly there came a second shock. The canoe was whirled forcibly from under him, and a heavy blow from some unseen object struck him with stunning ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... seen when digging up the tree at the mouth of his cave. Afterwards he discovered some tall, tough reeds growing near by. He laid in a supply of these. He found that when he wanted to use them, a good soaking in water made them as pliable and tough as ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... long session of lecturing, followed this outburst. At the end of it the victim was meek and pliable, or so professed herself. For at least five days Brinnaria kept up her effort to be comradely with Meffia. By the sixth day she was completely exhausted and the two ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... his eyes at this cool proposal, but we prevailed upon him to seek the permission of the Admiral-Superintendent, who, a good deal to my surprise, proved to be quite pliable. Cary's reputation for discretion must be very high in the little village where he lives if it is able to guarantee so disreputable a scribbler as Bennet Copplestone! The Admiral, fortunately, had not read any of my Works before they had been censored. When printed in Cornhill ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... hoping for a rest the next day—Sunday—but the island was such a disagreeable place to camp that it seemed necessary to cross to the mainland at least. A coil of strong, pliable wire had been included in our material. Here was a chance to use it to advantage. The stream on the left side of the island could be waded, although it was very swift; and we managed to get the wire ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... even here the earth was frozen solid. Attached to the hose was a sharp pointed iron pipe. This pipe was perforated in hundreds of places. When it was driven into the earth and the steam turned on, it thawed the flinty soil and rendered it pliable to the ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... predominating tinge of some overmastering passion, or acquired habit of acting and speaking, coloring the whole man. The patrician pride of Coriolanus, the stoicism of Brutus and Cato, the rapid and hurried vehemence of Hotspur, mark the class of characters I mean. But he fails where a ready and pliable yielding to the events and passions of life makes what may be termed a more natural personage. Accordingly I think his Macbeth, Lear, and especially his Richard, inferior in spirit and truth. In Hamlet, the natural fixed melancholy ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... this chink being kept open. The windpipe is composed of a series of cartilaginous or gristly rings connected together by softer tissues. These rings are not entire, but are completed behind by soft tissues including muscle. It follows that this tube is pliable and extensible—a very important provision, especially when large movements of the neck are made, during vigorous exercise, and also in ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... speculatiue, and practique parts of this damnable Art of Witchcraft, a dangerous and seducing inuention of Sathan, who from the Arcenals, and Magisins store-houses of his ancient and mischieuous furniture, hath not spared to affoord all helpe, and the best Engines for the subuerting of soules, pliable to his allurements: and to this end, beside a plaine narration of fact in this case committed and confessed, (least the Treatise should be too bare and naked) I haue added thereunto a few Propositions, agreeing to such a subiect matter, manifesting some speciall poynts not altogether ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... Sir Baynom Frogmorton and Sir Duncomb Colchester, they will be on my side. Moreover, there is yet a most great benefit to the kingdom in general by the sow iron made of the ironstone and Roman cinders in the Forest of Dean, for that metal is of a most gentle, pliable, soft nature, easily and quickly to be wrought into manufacture, over what any other iron is, and it is the best in the known world; and the greatest part of this sow iron is sent up Severne to the forges into Worcester, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... have no doubt, on utility. We must be candid enough to say, that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this species of cap—truly we think it the very type of all that is slovenly; but for use, there is not a more comfortable, portable, pliable, buyable, and washable a commodity, than your—nightcap are we to say? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... transferred after the manner of Thiersch. A strip of human skin was placed in one section over the frog skin, but became necrotic in four days, not being attached to the granulating surface. The man was discharged cured in six months. The frog skin was soft, pliable, and of a reddish hue, while the human white skin was firm and rapidly becoming pigmented. Leale cites the successful use of common warts in a case of grafting on a man of twenty who was burned on the foot by a stream of molten metal. Leale remarks that as common warts of the skin ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Here they undergo a sweating process, which diffuses moisture equally throughout the contents of each box. This prevents some grapes from retaining undue moisture, and it also softens the stems and makes them pliable. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... everywhere was green quiet, softened, made to glow enticingly by the sun's red disk about to dip behind the little hills.... All this Ruth saw and loved. It was an unaccustomed sight, for she was tied to the city. It altered her mood, softened her, made her more pliable. Bonbright could have planned no better than to have driven her along ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Prospect of bringing this great Contest to a happy Conclusion the next year.—Altho' the Enemy have gaind the Possession of Charleston, they have not succeeded to their Wishes in that Quarter. They do not find the People so pliable as they flatterd themselves they should. Notwithstanding Cornwallis' boasting Letter to Lord George, of "a compleat Victory obtaind the 16th Instant by His Majesties Troops under my Command, over the rebel southern Army," that brave Army checkd the Progress ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... the girl was very young, very pretty, I might say beautiful—not like anything he had ever met before. Without training, but he thought at her pliable age it was so easy to remedy that." (The old lawyer shook his head with a groan but said nothing.) "She had never seen anything but the rough people about, and knew only their manners and ways. Everything went on well enough for a little ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... among the bazaars, making purchases of curios as presents for the folks at home and adding to their personal stock of mementos. Jim secured among other things a cane made of a rare Indian wood, which while light was exceedingly strong and so pliable that it could be bent almost double like ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... nothing at all. A single garment without sleeves and reaching to the knees was all that covered their nakedness. For all ages and for both sexes there were furs in plenty for winter use. Beaver skins were cheap, in some years about as cheap as cloth. When properly treated they were soft and pliable, and easily made into clothes, caps, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... owed their earliest revival to the vagaries of a capricious taste, and the desire to give zest to the architecture of the day by their novelty. It was not for the sake of the new life there was in them, and of that pliable spirit of refinement so suited to the wise re-birth of ancient Love in Art. It is not surprising that some of the more modern masters of the old Renaissance, with whom that system had become venerable, from its universal use as the vehicle by which the greatest artists of the sixteenth and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; its impulse bears him along. At the foot of the waterfall he sits sequestered and hidden in its volume of sound. The birds know he has no designs upon them, and the animals see that his mind is in the creek. His enthusiasm anneals him, and makes him pliable to the scenes and influences he ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... it does not take much to make itself felt when the air is at a temperature of about -75deg.F., and when one is working with bare fingers. There were always some degrees of frost here. In order to keep the lashings pliable while they were being put on, they used a Primus lamp on a stone close to where they were working. I often admired their patience when I stood watching them; I have seen them more than once working barehanded by the hour together in a temperature ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... before a mixed audience, which an opponent as clever as yourself cannot with ease twist towards another bearing, or at least meet by a contrary fact, as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called stubborn things: I am sure they have been found pliable enough lately in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and parts of premisses. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... he would be taken into all the family interests. Gentle and pliable as oil, he seemed to penetrate every joint of the menage by a subtile and seductive sympathy. He was interested in the spinning, in the weaving,—and in fact, nobody knows how it was done, but, before the afternoon shadows had turned, he was sitting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... be known by its full bright eyes, pliable feet, and soft moist skin; the best is plump, fat, and nearly white, and the grain of the flesh is fine. The feet and neck of a young fowl are large in proportion to its size, and the tip of the breast-bone is soft, and easily bent between the fingers; the body of a capon is large, ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... boot comes half-way up the calf of the leg and the trouser is tucked into its top. They are without laces and pull on to the foot like the American "rubber boot." They are made of heavy, undyed leather, singularly soft and pliable, and thoroughly waterproof. The soles are shod with hobnails, but the boot is not very heavy. We often noted dead Germans who were bootless, their footgear having been appropriated by some victorious Frenchman, who had left near-by his own less ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... commanded respect. Tall, and even muscular, his frame might have been esteemed nearly perfect, were it not for the total absence of everything like flesh. Whipcord was scarcely more rigid than his arms and legs, or, at need, more pliable; but the outlines of his person were rather too angular for the proportion that the eye most approves. Still, his motions, being natural, were graceful, and, being calm and regulated, they gave him an air and dignity ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... his father also laid in his hands a gift. It was a soft, pliable belt, woven of the white, peeled roots of the cedar, dyed brilliantly, and worked into ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... shifted to a new object. The duchess of Marlborough was supplanted by Mrs. Masham, her own kinswoman, whom she had rescued from indigence and obscurity. This favourite succeeded to that ascendancy over the mind of her sovereign which the duchess had formerly possessed. She was more humble, pliable, and obliging than her first patroness, who had played the tyrant, and thwarted the queen in some of her most respected maxims. Her majesty's prepossession in favour of the tories and high-churchmen was no longer insolently condemned and violently opposed. The new confidant conformed to all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sell those?" asked Bill, pointing toward the moccasins. The Indian regarded them thoughtfully, and again the toes wriggled comfortably beneath the pliable moose-skin covering. Bill ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... reform. It is seldom that a tongue which has been accustomed to talk for many years in a certain way can be changed to talk in an opposite one. There may be modifications of the evil, but few real cures. But in the case of young folk it is different. They, being somewhat pliable in that member of the body, may, by seeing the fault portrayed in others, so dislike it as not to fall into it, and covet earnestly the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... to plank her upon the diagonal principle, using three thicknesses of comparatively thin plank, for I had no means by which to steam a single layer of planking of the necessary thickness and so render it pliable enough to bend to the correct shape; while I believed that by using thin plank I could bend it to shape unsteamed. I am getting somewhat ahead of my yarn, however; for the progress outlined above represented nearly three months' hard work, an appreciable proportion of which had to be ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the cognisance and exertion of the British court, whose duty it was to see justice done to its own subjects: he desired, however, that Pallet, who was confined in another place, might avail himself of his own disposition, which was sufficiently pliable; but when the governor desired to see his fellow-prisoner, the turnkey gave him to understand that he had received no orders relating to the lady, and therefore could not admit him into her apartment; though he was complaisant enough to tell him that she seemed very much ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... very polite and pliable all day, and his skill as a pilot won my commendation. When he expressed a desire to remain on shore, at the wharf, I did not object. As soon as the anchor was let go, all hands were piped to supper; but ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... properties of the mud ooze is remarkable. The “Philosophical Transactions” mention a human body dug up in the Isle of Axholme, of great antiquity, judging by the structure of the sandals on its feet, yet the skin was soft and pliable, like doe-skin leather, and the hair remained upon it.-—“Lincs. N. & Q.” Vol. III., ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... over the back and loins, and straight in the back. The hips are covered evenly with flesh, the legs full and thick, the under line, or stomach line, parallel to the back line, and the neck full and short. The eye should be bright, the face short, the bones of fine texture, and the skin soft and pliable. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... still desired. Jewdwine had no need of the poet; but of the journalistic side of Rickman he had endless need. It was a baser faculty, but his care must be to develop it, to train it, to handle it judiciously, until by handling he had made it pliable to all the uses of his paper. Jewdwine had a genius for licking young men into shape. He could hardly recognize that band of awkward and enthusiastic followers in his present highly disciplined and meritorious staff. None of them were like Rickman; none of them had done anything to rouse an ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... reply to his father. He did not know what to reply. His mind was still in the pliable state, and he found that he was being infected by his father's passion. But he had been taught at Rumpell's to believe in Invention, in Progress by the Development of Machinery, and so his mind reeled a little under this sudden onslaught on ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... They are a soft pliable mass, well supplied with blood vessels, especially in children. Some are firmer and these are the kind seen in adults. The color varies from pale pink to dark red. The structure is similar to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... are obtained from the front and lateral aspects of the thigh or upper arm, the skin in those regions being pliable and comparatively free ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... thereof, and yet comforteth himself with the hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland (where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion offered him to make his profit and advantage. I find that the gentleman hath here many friends indifferently persuaded of his innocency, notwithstanding the closing up of his apology ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to begin work, take four or five strands of the cane, and, after having doubled them up singly into convenient lengths and tied each one into a single knot, put them into the water to soak. The cane is much more pliable and is less liable to crack in bending when worked while wet. As fast as the soaked cane is used, more of it should be put into ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Chik, and Che' Mat Tukang—had rushed out, but all of them had gone back again to remove their effects, with the exception of Tungku Long himself, who stood looking at the flames. He was armed with a rattan-work shield, and an ancient and very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing upwards, quite unaware that any trouble, other than that involved by the conflagration, was toward, To' Kaya rushed upon him and stabbed him with his spear in the ribs. For a long time they fought, Tungku ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... 'putting in the thin end of the wedge'—and,—carefully steering clear of all controversial matters,—contrived in a great measure to reassert the old magnetic sway he had been wont to exercise over Brent's more pliable mind when at college—so that before they parted, he had obtained from him a solemn promise that there should be no 'secession' or even preparation for secession to Rome, till six months ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli |
